There’s my son.  It’s Good Friday, and so this morning I have been thinking about GoodFriday sort of things—the cross, Jesus, God giving up his Son, the fulfillment and end of the sacrificial system of the Old Testament that Hebrews speaks of—those things.  As I continued on that line of thinking, I began to realize the craziness of the cross, and the significance hit home in a way that it never has in my whole life:

Look at my son.  Do you know what I would never do?  Give him up.  For anything.  Ever.  EVER!

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Our minds can’t imagine this kind of sacrifice.  As an ok father, I have enough love for my son that the loss would cause me unimaginable pain, and I could never love you enough to loose him for you.  And yet God, a perfect father, did this.  Could you imagine how much that must have hurt. The Brian McLarens of the world who just dismiss the majesty of this act as “cosmic child abuse” miss that.  They miss, and don’t understand, the perfection of God, the Trinity, His love and Justice, the infinite ugliness of sin, and that Jesus, as God, was willingly taking on his own wrath.  God felt both pains: the loss of a son and the bearing of all human sin. My Lord and my God, we can not even begin to fathom the depth and richness of your love seen in the cross.

This is the centerpiece of our faith, the centerpiece of the Bible, and the centerpiece of time and eternity—that God became nothing, so that he could give us everything, by giving us himself.  The cross is offensive, foolish weakness, but to those who are being saved by it, it is life and power (1Cor. 1:18).  Happy Good Friday.

Well, I don’t know what to say.  I’ve read this book twice this week—but, I don’t know what to say.  The title, Not For Sale, is ironic because it’s an exposition of the fact that people are for sale, as unimaginable as that is 150 years post emancipation in Great Britain and the U.S.

Of course, awareness of the problem for most of us has grown over the last few years, but I had never seen the gruesome details so vividly.  Sex trafficking is the sterile name for the atrocities, but lets call it what it is: people—men, women, uncles, parents—who sell children to men who will rape them.

I still don’t know what to say.

Reading the book, and watching videos of a three-day conference, I fell in love with the heroes in the fight.  Kru Nam, an artist turned abolitionist, is one of the bravest, craziest women I have ever heard of.  And I know some crazy women.  In Chiang Mai, Thailand, she was so shocked by the stories of kids on the streets who had escaped the Karaoke bars.  The kids told her about their friends who were still enslaved by the bar owners, being raped ten times a night.  Kids, 3 to 17 years old.  Kru Nam, like all of us, was horrified and broken for these kids. She didn’t waste a second.

That night, without a plan beyond step one, she went into the first bar she saw, and grabbed two girls and a boy, ran out, and took them into her home.  She did this every night after.  Her reputation growing, bar owners put out the word to kill her—but she kept going.  That’s what I’m talking about.  Crazy heroic.  Awesome.

While David Batstone was authoring chapter one of Not For Sale, Kru Nam called him and said, “I have 27 kids and they’re living in two little grass huts—I need a house.”  David said that he would try to get her a house.  She called back, while he was writing chapter two, and told him that there was now 53 kids.  David said, “O.K., I will see if I can get you two houses.”  While he was writing chapter six, she called and said, “I couldn’t stop—I have 88 kids.”  David, jokingly told her to stop rescuing kids, but then said, “We are going to have to get a movement of people for that.”

Today, in northern Thailand, there is not a house or two, but a village, ran by Kru Nam, for her 127 kids, funded by a movement that Batstone has begun—but the problem is nowhere near contained.  This kind of heroic effort needs to happen 100,000 more times.

I’ll be honest, I’m not the stats guy, but the numbers totally rock me out of my V-neck.  Today, there are 27 million slaves, “more slaves [that] are in bondage today than were bartered for in four centuries of trans-Atlantic slave trade.”  Poverty is the problem.  Girls and boys in the worst conditions in the world are tricked, and wind up in a foreign land, in lock down, bent to their master’s will every night, for the profit and pleasure of the most callous of criminals.  This is the lot for many of the weakest people on our planet.

Francis Chan asks it best: what would we do—how much trouble would we go to—if the one taken was our own brother, sister, or child?

I still don’t know what to say.  But I know that Jesus has saved me.  He’s given me a heart that loves him more than the lures of comfort and consumerism.  He said to follow him.  He also explained what that means with the words, “Whatever you have done to the least of these…”

Origin Coffee is coming to Rocklin, CA.  It is going to be an opportunity to be like Jesus.  Kru Nam got this.  I look around my town, and I see very few things that look like Jesus, but I think that’s changing.  At Origin we’ve been using a phrase—“Tell them we’re coming.”  We say this because Origin Coffee is going to empower the next Kru Nams, rescuing those captive.  I have to go right now, but I want to tell you more about that next time.  Check out this video below if you want to see the work Kru Nam is doing.

Here are a few of images from Dan and Erin Cordova’s wedding—the first wedding pics that I have shot with my new Camera; no more borrowing from friends, yes!  But, Celestial’s images will be up soon, and they will tell the real story.

One of the things that I love about the art of photography is that it gives the artist such an ability to celebrate life in very concrete ways.  The most likely result of a photograph is that something tangible and real is captured, something beautiful, something painful, something sad, something surprising—something real.

Weddings have become one of my favorite things to photograph because it something concrete that celebrates the beauty of love, even though society has an extremely different view of it.  Societies idea is that somehow marriage is a restriction on true love; certainly this is how it is portrayed in our entertainment.  In This Momentary Marriage, Piper says, “How much more will the magnificence of marriage in the mind of God seem unintelligible in a modern Western culture, where the main idol is self; and its main doctrine is autonomy; and its central act of worship is being entertained; and its three main shrines are the television, the Internet, and the cinema; and its most sacred genuflection is the uninhibited act of sexual intercourse.”  But, the truth of marriage is such a beautiful thing that reflects the very nature of God.

When I get to photograph a wedding, I am reminded about the truth of the gospel.  On a couples wedding day, they are usually the happiest they have ever been—at least, by the time they get to the altar together, they are; relief from the stress in the moments prior adds to their joy.  Because of the gospel, we work hard to make ourselves ready for Christ—rather, the Spirit works hard in us—yet we are moved forward by love from, and love for, Jesus, because of the cross—he gave everything for us; we responds by making ourselves ready for him.   It is because of this that our stresses, the stresses that the bride and groom feel before they are united, are made light as we keep the marriage moment in mind.

And as we prepare for the day that we will be fully united to Christ, we prepare for a day that is infinitely better than a wedding day.  Again, Piper says about the transition from marital bliss to the eternal marriage of the lamb, “Nothing is lost.  The music of every pleasure is transposed to an infinitely higher key.”  Every moment in this life looks toward that moment when all will be made right, as we are united with Christ.

Here’s one last quote from Piper—get the book: “The greatness and glory of marriage is beyond our ability to think or feel without divine revelation and without the illumining and awakening work of the Holy Spirit.  The world cannot know what marriage is without learning it from God.  The natural man does not have the capacities to see or receive or feel the wonder of what God has designed for marriage to be.”

So there it is.  That’s why I love shooting weddings. That day is a small picture of gospel hope. Do you see marriage like that?  Perhaps you have a negative view of marriage and have personal experience to prove it—fair enough.  Do share.

Family Fun-4.jpg, originally uploaded by Elijah Stephen.

Celest and I are teens again. That includes taking cute-silly-fun photos. I’m thinking about getting braces. Does anybody else have an irrepressible desire to TP something?

I love this!  Since I finished school, I have started writing songs again and redoing some of my old ones so that my church can sing them—It’s amazing what not taking seven classes at once can do for you.  I’m looking forward to sharing my progress ASAP.

In addition, a lot of the time that I have freed up has given me a chance to study the Word and read a bunch; I’m totally loving that.  God has been teaching me so much.

I am a worship leader, which I have mentioned.  I have been craving understanding of what that title means—for many that title doesn’t even come close to being applicable, and I have had a deep fear of that being the case for me as well—may it never be so.

The more and more I search, the more clear and inescapable the discovery: the roll of a worship leader is simply to point people to Jesus and turn them loose.  I strive to do that every time I am put before a gathering of worshipers.  Simplistic?  No!  There is infinite depth and beauty to unfold from such a manner of leading.

There is no New Testament title of “worship leader;” Paul did not go into cities and appoint pastors, teachers, and guys-that-play-guitar-and-sing-songs.  We who do this need to be very careful to evaluate our rolls in the church.

What the New Testament does call for, in terms of roll, is people who will lead well.  This means leading a Godly life, loving the Word, “adorning the doctrine of God,” as Titus 2:10 puts it, “adorning,” meaning to make it the main thing people see, “doctrine of God,” meaning Jesus—DOCTRINE, not doctrines; it’s singular for that reason.  As a result, the art that follows will be good art.  Lets be about that worship leaders.

I’m starting my sixth paragraph.  Why have I said all of this?  It’s because I am surrounded by a community.  Even after all this time of not blogging, somehow there are still people checking in and reading my rants, and what I’m up to.  Your reasons are your own.  I do, sometimes, wonder about you, however, my fine, wonderful, perhaps somewhat crazy, friends

I want to state my trajectory and be very clear about what I’m about.  This is accountability.  It lets me share what I have worked through in my heart and head as the Lord has been teaching me.  I also want to lay a foundation over the next few months about what it means to be a worshiper.  It’s amazing how such an old idea can get so far from Biblical.

What I am doing is not cool.  It is not hip right now to have an opinion.  It is not hip to use words like doctrine.  However, I am certain that this language needs to come from the perspective of a worship leader because I am convinced that so many who “worship lead” do a better job at using the music itself to stimulate a response, a tragedy, rather than the person of Jesus, who brings people to their knees on his own terms.

I don’t know what the Lord will do in my life over the next year, but I look forward to opportunities to share my journey with anyone who cares if it gives God the glory.  I will be writing songs, taking pictures, making videos, writing blogs, and anything else I can do to communicate how incredible the God who loves to redeem us is.  Our redeemed state is to worship him.  That is so much bigger than so many of us have settled for.  Lets change that.

What is up my friends! It’s good to be back. I have much to share. I could tell you a thousand stories, but I’m not going to; I just want to start by sharing about the massive shift that Jesus has been doing in my heart.

What an insane last few months. My life will never be the same. I might even—dare I say—know what I want to be when I grow up. Maybe. Lets not get crazy. What I know for sure is that Jesus is at the center of it all, and he is continuing to reshape my thinking moment by moment.

It has now been two years since a day I delved inside and pulled out the words that became a song I wrote called Blinding Light. Thinking about the words in this song, I realize that they signaled the beginning of a long process of change that God had begun in me. I was drifting into the confusion that grips our culture of complete uncertainty and doubt. It was an awful time. But God was setting me on firmer ground, removing me from sinking sand that was probably about to take me under.  Totally gripped by the truth of gospel in God’s word, and the fact that God has preserved truth in every word, I wrote:

A blinding light awakes my soul tonight
Beauty bright lovely heaven’s eyes
The haze is lifting the maze untwisting
I’m coming back to the start
Oh a peace is passing my understanding
I’m coming back to your heart
And I’m finding my life in you; I’m coming home.

That blinding light is Jesus, the light of the world, totally wrecking us for anything but him. Though we look to lesser versions, they don’t satisfy.

My life has been re-routed. I realized the misdirection, and I had to make a change. All of my iPhone GPS user friends know what I’m talking about, because they have experienced a micro version of this: “The stupid blue location dot is nowhere near the purple line! Totally lost.  Why am I in the middle of a field?  Crap.  Edit. From ‘current location.’ New ‘Route.’ Ah, peace and sanity!” Of course with the iPhone we end up doing that ten more times, but that’s another blog. The point is that I have a new clarity that I have never known my whole life.

Ok, but that was two years ago; why the sudden mention of it?

The work (sanctification) that God does in our hearts show’s its results at varied pace; I have been learning, slowly, what it means to join God on his mission, rather than trying to attach him into my life like an accessory—for sure, he is more Kinglike than capelike. I had those two confused.

All of that clarity has been sharpening into focus this whole time. Fast-forward to now. Have you ever had that moment where something previously confusing all of a sudden made perfect sense—perhaps, why women insist men lift the lid, or something like that; I had that moment over the last six months. The realization, despite my light-hearted tone, was nothing slight.

What does it mean to walk in redemption? What does it mean to tell others about redemption? What is redemption? Isn’t the Christian life redemption?—it is indeed! Isn’t redemption, the biblical promise since Genesis 3, freedom from the curse? Are not Christians to be joining with God in that redemption back to the state of how he saw it: “And God saw that it was good?” Why are Christians so caught up in what they are against, rather than what they are for? Isn’t the gospel good news? Is the Church not the body and bride of Christ? Then, shouldn’t the Church look like Christ, and be devoted to his purpose? Is there any other way for the Church to look like Christ than that it be gathered together, and living sacrificial lives toward each other and the needy? Is not the gospel the thing that unites everybody, even natural enemies, providing the basis for every good deed? Does the gospel not affect every aspect of life? Did Jesus set precedence for a life of comfort and affluence, or avoiding it for his sake? Then why do we say that we follow Christ and yet structure our lives toward that which he didn’t? Is there any motivation toward any of the previous unless you are one-hundred-thousand-percent convinced that you are justified purely by faith apart from works, on account of, none other than, Christ’s payment for your sin and righteousness to your account?

Some of my theologian readers snapped to their wide spread wrestling stance while reading the previous paragraph, due to the pervasive liberalism in the Church—calm down. I am not that, though I have been there, and have great sympathy for those, and their struggles. The gospel is doctrinal truth, internally transformative, socially revolutionary/regenerative, perfectly balanced between all three. Please, your grace is needed since my space is limited.

I love the Church. I am so completely committed to her. The bride of Christ is Christ to the world until he comes. The world God created, that he called good, is the world, which he is redeeming every aspect of. Every aspect of our lives has been redeemed for his glory; we are alive!  We live in grace as our mode of existence, and that grace, seen in every word of scripture, is the deepest beauty, infinitely to be unfolded, that he has brought into the lives of believers through the Church, that has become his visible representative to all, to come into and experience love, actually lived out between people; this is our origin in him, the point to which we must return.

To trust God is to trust his word. To trust is to stop focusing on the command to not eat of the one tree: it is to reclaim the freedom to love and enjoy fully all that he has created for and because of new life, by the Holy Spirit, because of Jesus, to the glory of God: the gospel in a sentence.

I love that I have been called to lead people to worship God.  That is my roll in the body of Christ. This is worship: that we get our eyes off of the idolatry of self, and let our desire for God shape every aspect of our lives as we enjoy him, in response to his love; our response is that we join him in his redemption of creation, every Christian on mission, bearing the name of Jesus wherever they find themselves, at all times. It is to this end that I aim to use every inch of this blog.

Grace and peace,

Elijah Stephen Meeker.

She’s lovely
More today than those we’ve past
She’s lovely
Of all our love right now is most
She’s lovely
Reflection shows my love in yours
Forevermore from sea to shore
From dawn to day we stand as one
And all in sum it’s clear:
She’s lovely

Thanks for being by my side my love.

Everyday is better than the last.

I Love you so much.

Love, your husband-